Sunday, November 25, 2007

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

This book is a story of Gen. Xers in New York in the dot-com bust. The plot is there, it's a story, it does its job, there's nothing wrong with it. But that's not what's cool about the book.

The first thing that's cool is the way the author does detail. Usually I'm not fond of excessive detail because it seems unrealistic to me that people would notice that, but here it just seemed spot-on. For example, early on in the book the author describes a character's make-up, from that character's point of view, in terms of the character's own perception of the flaws of her make-up and the flaws on her face that it's concealing. And it was an absolutely perfect description of my own face at the time I was reading it. It's like the author was inside my head when I look in the mirror around 3 pm and was articulating in words all the thoughts that pass through my head as wordless concepts. As the book went on I stopped noticing the descriptions of detail (which is good, it means they didn't overwhelm the book) but in every case it was exactly right without getting overwrought.

The second thing that was very cool is a spoiler. If you read the rest of this, it will stop you from having "Whoa!" moments of realization if you read the book. So you might want to stop reading now. But if you're still here, the second cool thing is that the book is set in the months leading up to September 11, but this is never explicitly mentioned (until Sept. 11 actually happens, that is). Months are mentioned, a few hints are dropped, so you might figure it out or you might not. I figured it out because a movie was alluded to (by namedropping the real-life actress who starred in it), and I happened to remember where in res I was living at the time that movie came out, thus being able to work out that it was 2001. I think if my life had been more stable during that time and I had been living in one place for several years, I would have missed it. Casually dropped into all this are references that would become more significant after Sept. 11. Firefighters are included in a list of people who might be thought of as heroes. The skyline of Manhattan is mentioned, without mentioning any specific buildings. It's all very subtly done, as is appropriate given that the characters had no idea what was coming.

This makes me really curious about how this book will stand up to the test of time, how it will look to readers 20 or 50 years from now for whom this setting is nothing but a history lesson.

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